IPL

Lasith Malinga leads the bowlers

It’s nice to see bowlers being decisive in a Twenty20 match. Far too often they might as well just glue different mugshots onto a bowling machine and use that instead.

In the Champions League final, Mumbai successfully defended 139. For a large proportion of the match, the commentators were talking up Chris Gayle and how amazing a Twenty20 batsman he is. Gayle is amazing, but he specialises in hitting sixes slightly more frequently and slightly more reliably than other six-hitting batsmen. It might seem like he’s the perfect Twenty20 player because of that, but even the sport’s ball-whoppiest format presents different challenges from time to time.

Gayle was actually dismissed by Harbhajan Singh, who finished with the best figures (3-20), but it was Lasith Malinga who stood out, not least because he’d also seemed like a monumental stumbling block for Somerset in the semi final.

In that match, the Zoidermen had needed 29 runs from 18 balls, 12 of which were to be bowled by Malinga. Based on how he was bowling, they basically concluded that they needed to score 14 off his two overs and 15 off the other, no matter who bowled it. Some have been at pains to stress the importance of James Franklin’s performance, but we’d give half the credit for that over to the Malinga-enforced run recalculation.

Royal Challengers Bangalore hit a six off the final ball to win

We’ve seen a handful of games where one team needs a six off the final ball to win – it’s hard to beat. We’ll talk you through the climax of Bangalore’s win over South Australia in the Twenty20 Champions League:

Some Aussie guy ran in and bowled and Bangalore’s wicketkeeper tonked it for six. Then some other Aussie, an older one, had a bit of a cry into his hat. Then all the Bangalore players did some jumping.

After that, there was a bit of talking and a microphone was held in front of the faces of several players, one of whom was wearing glasses. A man in a suit held a massive cheque. Then there were some adverts.

Royal Challengers Bangalore get another life

Those who suggest we might have lost track of the IPL during the league phase may have a point.

We were at a friend’s house yesterday and he switched on the IPL, asking: “Is this important?” to which we answered, with some confidence: “No.”

Turns out it was important and we were also wrong about which team was going to win. Chennai Super Kings, who came second in the league, go through to the final, but Royal Challengers Bangalore, who came top, still have another chance. They will play the winner of the third v fourth match which takes place today.

This system for how four teams can be reduced to two finalists is a good one. It’s a shame it’s undermined by the plodding league that precedes it. King Cricket’s IPL-related search traffic is about a fifth of what it was in mid-April, so that’s not just our opinion.

We’re going to make use of play-offs when we’re choosing from menus in the future. There has to be a better way than ‘thinking about your decision’.

Rajasthan Royals sponsorship

Take a look at these two people:

In the West, having tanned skin is a sign of wealth. In India, having pale skin is a sign of wealth.

Many Westerners use sun cream so they can be in the sun for longer or smear themselves in fake tan. Many Indians hide from the sun and may even use not-at-all-scary-sounding skin bleaching products or lightening creams, like this one advertised by Shah Rukh Khan.

Everyone wants to be someone else, except for the marketing executives (particularly those who have persuaded people that the way to get a tan is with sunblock protecting your skin).

So is this the story behind Shane Warne’s face? No, we believe it’s more to do with Barista’s sponsorship of the Rajasthan Royals.

Barista are selling Royals-themed coffees during the IPL and in return, Warne will be sporting a face the colour of their Espresso Italiano.

IPL format 2011

This is so perfect we actually had a little bit of a cry to express our gratitude. We struggle to explain our feelings about this unbelievable format, but if pushed, we’d go for ’super psyched’.

Brace yourself.

Group stages

There are 10 IPL teams. They are split into two groups of five.

• Every team plays the other four in its group twice
• Every team plays four of those from the other group once
• Every team plays the remaining team from the other group twice

Why do they play teams from the other group? It means more matches.

Why do they play one team from the other group twice? Don’t know. Same reason probably.

How do they decide which will be the cross-group home and away fixtures? They pick team names out of an Indian Cements Ltd sponsored hat.

Play-offs

The teams ranked first and second after the mixed bag of results from the group phase play each other. The winner goes through to the final.

The teams ranked third and fourth play each other and the winner goes through to a match against the loser of the first play-off match.

The winner of that third match goes through to the final.

Final

It is rumoured that the winner of this match may win the IPL, but this could not be confirmed at the moment we decided we would click ‘publish’ on this post.

Has anything happened in the IPL yet?

No, nothing has yet happened in the IPL.

Matches have been played, teams have won, teams have lost, but nothing of any importance has taken place.

Teams who have won a match are probably about one-seventh of the way to a play-off place. If you are excited about a particular team being one-seventh of the way to a play-off place, you must be a really huge fan of one of the brands.

We say ‘brand’ because the branding is the only real constant. The teams themselves are almost entirely different to 2010 because they held another auction.

Kings and Royals shunted from their IPL thrones

There is only one acceptable way to get a royal title: by going along with what everyone’s calling you because you can no longer be arsed explaining that Brian Lara’s the king, not you. Royalty through exasperated resignation.

Any other route to a title is flat-out wrong. If you self-apply some sort of royal nomenclature, you’re definitely a wrong ‘un, so we won’t be crying into our bacon and cheese Staffordshire oatcakes that Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals have been booted from the IPL

Kingfisher IPL advert

British readers will never have seen this. We saw it rather a lot when we were in Bangalore earlier in the year. It’s quite something.

Watch it three times and see whether the tune’s stuck in your head.

Mumbai Indians v Chennai Super Kings, IPL final match report

Alex writes:

I watched the pre-match sunglasses-fest/pose-athon while tucking into Kashmiri lamb shank rogan josh. Unfortunately, my reluctantly embraced ‘no beer’ policy meant I enjoyed the main event in my room, accompanied by a bottle of Bisleri bottled water.

What I like to call “the IPL ad endurance challenge” really demands something stronger. Indian IPL advertising makes you think that the “more ties!” ad is on low rotation in the UK.

Being as it was the final, there was a wider range of advertisers than for the league matches, which typically featured the same three ads repeated a billion times each. For this match, there were as many as seven different ads and there was even one I hadn’t seen before.

I’m quite familiar with it now.

Sadly, neither of my favourite ads appeared: the Fanta ad (I fancy the girl) nor the Havells ad where a guy hangs someone, makes a glum expression and then walks home. That one’s a classic that would probably be less impressive if I understood the voiceover at the end.

Indian media coverage of the IPL and the fans’ view

Indian newspapers and 24 hour news channels are awash with stories about Lalit Modi and the income tax investigations into all aspects of the IPL. The bombs at Chinnaswamy Stadium get a few mentions as well.

We get the impression that most people here don’t particularly care about this; that the unrelenting news coverage is giving a false impression of people’s priorities. The priority is the final. Sachin Tendulkar will hopefully be playing.

Whatever’s going on with the finances of the IPL, the huge sums of money seem a source of pride for many Indians. The IPL’s not merely a cricket event, it’s a sports event. It’s competing with – and arguably beating – what over here is known as the EPL, English football’s Premier League. Financially speaking, India is currently the centre of the sporting world.

As for the fact that the IPL’s Twenty20 cricket, that doesn’t seem quite so significant. Most people we’ve spoken to have just liked cricket and the main selling point of the IPL seems to be that they can watch a whole match in an evening. It’s not so much about the sixes and fours. It’s just cricket in a manageable size.

Finally, what a great country where you can have an in-depth conversation with a waiter about the different techniques used by Harmeet Singh when delivering his long run-up leg breaks and flippers.